Review: Aurora Rising

Aurora Rising 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch…

A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm
A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates
A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder
An alien warrior with anger management issues
A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering

And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy. 

I'm going to be honest with you guys, this was a surprise in the post from the publisher! I love Jay's books but I'm kinda really picky about Sci-Fi as I do prefer fantasy. I picked this up anyway and I ended up being pleasantly surprised by it! It's been super hyped, as I'm sure everyone's aware, but I did really enjoy it! 

This is gonna be a weird comment but, the opening of the book with the action and the imminent peril going on, then pausing and rewinding for context and background screamed the whole record scratch, freeze frame meme like" yup, that's me, you're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation". It also oddly reminded me of Emperor's New Groove. No I don't know why that example is what popped in to my head, llamas and space have no correlation but this is my brain so here we are.

The opening was tense and had me holding my breath, I had so many questions right from the first chapter. I was more and more intrigued by each nugget of information Tyler dropped for us, and I was enjoying his narrative. I immediately decided it was time I jumped on the Illuminae hype, and I sat back to enjoy reading what I knew was going to be a wild ride. It only took me a couple of sittings as well! 

Aurora Rising is nicely paced, and like I said, I'm picky with my Sci-Fi and I don't always enjoy it but I got so hooked in to this. The mystery, the slightly creepy, spine shiver moments with Auri that I found so spooky, the hilarious banter between all of the characters who were such a diverse bunch with interesting personalities. Each character was such a little sass master in their own way, some more than others. The snark was just on point okay, and I appreciated that. I also appreciated the squad as a whole, they were a bit dysfunctional to start with but watching them come together was brilliant. 

I loved Squad 312, they're such a brilliant bunch! Tyler is the Alpha aka the leader, he's dimpled, he's called Goldenboy because he's the best at everything and basically perfect and I was envisioning some all American, QB kinda guy. He's just....so optimistic and all "I have faith" which had me like, "Oh Tyler....oh dear". BUT I could so picture him doing the Office, "stares in to the camera" thing a couple of times. 

Scarlett is his twin sister, she's the Face aka the Diplomat. She's like the mum of the group, taking care of everyone, knowing what everyone needs...but able to completely flirt her way in and out of anything. I loved that she and Tyler had such a strong sibling bond, and I loved seeing them interact. 

Cat is our Ace, aka the pilot and the SASS on her! I loved her instantly, she's got tats, she's a badass and she will tell it how it is. The banter between her and Scarlett in particular had me in stitches, and I shipped she and Tyler so bad! Even though I kinda thought Tyler and Auri were gonna be a thing at one point. 

Auri aka Aurora, I empathised with her and what happened to her. There was a lot of mystery about her but she low-key freaked me out a couple of times with her possession thing. Like it sent a chill up my spine, and was like some ghost horror movie. I will say that despite all of that, she did get on my nerves once or twice but I got past that! 

Kal, the Tank aka combat and strategy specialist. Let's be real here people, y'all know I love Legolas so y'all should know that the space elf was going to be my ultimate favourite. They kept calling him Elrond and Legolas and I was living for it but despite his whole "I will kill you" "punch first and ask questions later", anger issues thing he had going on...I felt like he was kinda extra in his own way too. I mean...."Oh I'm in love with Aurora...I will banish myself back to the civil war of my people and probably get myself killed" okay dude. Bit extreme but you do you. I loved him so much. 

Zila...oh Zila. She's the Brain, aka Scientist and she's a low-key Sociopath. Her one sentence POV's cracked me up, and she loves her gun. Loves it. The only thing with her is...she barely says anything all book and sometimes I actually forgot she was there, so aside from her willingness to shoot people in to oblivion I was kinda like...what is your purpose? Like maybe she'll have more to do next book?

Finian is probably my other ultimate favourite after Kal. He's the Gearhead, meaning he's the tech/mechanic kinda guy. He's another alien, but a different race to Kal. I kinda wanted to smack him one a few times which is how I knew I was gonna love him. The sass from him is unreal. He's disabled and has a suit to help him walk and move. My favourite thing about him? His little "hmmmm which twin do I choose....Tyler or Scarlet?", I lived for his internal monologue. If I could choose to save only one member of this squad, I'd be so torn between he and Kal...the others are on their own. 

Honestly, it's such a cracking space adventure. We've got a heist, we've got creepy...well, plant people. Is all I can say. There's a tonne of adventure and humour and the thing I found about this? It was so easy to sit and read for a little bit, and then the next thing you know it's been 200 pages. It's so easy to sit and binge read, and I breezed through it in no time at all! We do have some romance, although I do feel like it was a bit all over the place in the beginning because I had completely different couples in my head at the beginning and then we suddenly switched gears and went in a different direction although we did avoid a love triangle which is a win. I don't know, maybe it was just me? But I felt like we were heavily leaning towards Aurora and Tyler. 

Anyway, I loved the world building, with the history to Aurora Academy and Terran and space exploration, and basically how everything came to be as it currently is. I liked the aspect with Auri being out of her time, and this shady cover up. But I really loved getting to see the customs and history of a few of the different alien races! 

I have two gripes with this book that prevented me from giving this 5 stars. The first, I will admit to reading Scarlett's POV initially and getting confused because I thought it was Tyler's and I had to check. The second? The ending. I didn't feel the emotional impact from it that other people did, and while some things did surprise me...I was hugely disappointed by the reveal. 

The moment it was revealed who the GIA agent was I was sat there like "right, well, Princeps is clearly X person" and I was disappointed that it would be so obvious and predictable, but then I did also figure that Amie and Jay would hit us with a plot twist and it would be someone unexpected so I perked up and dived right back in....only to get to the end and be right in my initial assessment. That was the only time the book really disappointed me, because despite the cliches, I had so much fun reading it, and while some parts were predictable, this pushed the book from being "yeah a couple things were a bit predictable" to "yeah this book is hugely predictable" territory. 

Aurora Rising is a lot of fun to read, there's snark, there's banter and excellent dialogue. We've got excellent characters with different, fun personalities, a lot of representation and diversity, a tonne of action, adventure and humour and it's such a bingeable read!